A Little Piece of Land
The motion: “In this novella the dream of the farm is a comfort that keeps men working, not a possibility.”
Your opponent: John Steinbeck · Course: Pearson Edexcel International GCSE English Literature (4ET1) · Assessment objectives: AO1, AO4
Candy's savings almost make it real. Almost is doing a great deal of work in that sentence.
What you are asked to argue
Argue for or against. Steinbeck will insist you account for the moment the dream nearly happens.
What the specification expects you to bring
- The dream's repetitions and who joins it in what order
- Candy's savings and the moment the sum works
- Crooks's chapter and his brief belief
- 1930s migrant labour: wages, the bindle, the lack of security
- The circular structure — the novella begins and ends at the same pool
Positions that are defensible
Disagreeing with the figure is not an error. Any of these can score full marks if argued well:
- That the dream is real until Lennie destroys it, and the tragedy is contingent rather than structural
- That it functions differently for each man — comfort for Candy, possibility for George, dignity for Crooks
- That its value is in the telling itself, independent of whether it could happen
Common misconceptions this debate is built to expose
- Wrong: The novella is about friendship.
The correction: Friendship is what the economic conditions make almost impossible — that is why George and Lennie are remarkable to everyone who meets them. - Wrong: The descriptions of the river and the bunkhouse are scene-setting.
The correction: The setting carries the argument: the pool the novella returns to, the bunkhouse's shelf of possessions, the harness room Crooks is given.
What passing it proves
A judgement about the dream's function that survives the Candy's-money objection, grounded in the novella's structure and its economics.
Why them?
Read the life before you argue with it — the case you are about to meet was built by a real person, over a real career:
- The life of John Steinbeck — Chronicler of the Dispossessed · Novelist · 1902–1968